


The Loneliest Mile (The Threshing Floor Remix)

by Woad



Category: 1872 - Fandom, Marvel, Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 05:33:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woad/pseuds/Woad
Summary: Steve comes back for Tony.





	The Loneliest Mile (The Threshing Floor Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fluffypanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffypanda/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Been Through the Mill](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11503452) by [Fluffypanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffypanda/pseuds/Fluffypanda). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Fluffypanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffypanda/pseuds/Fluffypanda) in the [Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018) collection. 



> This wound up darker than I originally intended. Many apologies in advance!

Snowflakes dance in the night air. They glimmer in the light of his dying lantern, playful and inviting, even as the wind blows them out into the darkness of the stormy night.

Spring is due soon, but it feels like this winter will never end.

It's been six long months. Six months since they buried what was left of Steve. Every time he puts on the Iron Man suit, he remembers that day. The horror of it has faded with time, but the grief feels just as fresh as the earth that they shoveled over the pine box that day.

Tony's been up to visit Steve's grave several times. Dandelions have sprouted beneath the headstone. He wonders if anything will ever grow out of his own grief, something other than the anger and sorrow that have been his daily companions. Heaven knows he'd be better off without them. They helped his old demons break him again today. He's been drinking since noon.

His head tips back, and his tongue laves at the mouth of the whiskey bottle, searching for another drop of peat and smoke. He's disappointed when there's nothing, and flings the bottle away, hears it smash against the hitching post out there, a glittering pile of shards now.

It makes his heart twist painfully, remembering one of the first times the sheriff ever smiled at him.

_"What do you mean you're a lousy shot? Doesn't your company sell arms?"_

_"Did," Tony says stiffly. "Don't anymore. And just because I made them, doesn't mean I could ever hit the broad side of a barn."_

_"Come on, you can't be that bad."_

Tony smiles a bit to himself, closes his eyes, and the cold and the snow fade away, replaced with a warm summer day. The sheriff is lining up glistening green bottles along a fence.

_"I feel like I'm sixteen again," Steve says as he comes back to stand beside Tony. Steve grins, takes careful aim, and squeezes the trigger._

Tony hears a  _pop_ in the memory _,_ and the bottle disappears in the next instant, reduced to dust and glimmering shards in the grass. Then Steve is handing him the rifle, pointing at the next bottle.

_"Don't focus on if you made the shot. Follow the rifle's recoil through first."_

_"I don't know about this…" Tony is drowning in thoughts of the war, of that day on a hill, watching as his handiwork cut down scores of young men._

_Steve startles him, coming up from behind and guiding Tony's elbow upward, gently correcting his stance._

_"Easy—" Steve's breath is warm and pleasant on Tony's ears. It makes him forget about the blood on his hands, if only for a minute. "There you go."_

Tony remembers squeezing the trigger, feeling the rifle kick back against his shoulder. The second bottle joins the first as broken, jagged shards in the dry, yellow grass. He swallows, hands the gun back to Steve.

_It's only a bottle, he tells himself. But in his mind, he sees the faces of those dead soldier boys again. One moment they're whole and healthy, and the next, all their_ maybes _and_ some days _have been stolen away._

Tony shivers in the cold. He really ought to go inside, but he has no care for  _shoulds_ just now. He pulls the cork on another bottle with his teeth, and spits it out. Smells like rubbing alcohol, so it's probably the dregs of cheap vodka. He can't be bothered to check. It will do the job, no matter how it tastes.

He throws it back in a few swigs, and the night doesn't seem quite so cold. Then he tosses this bottle to the same fate as the first.

—and hears a bottle shattering at Steve's feet.

He must be far gone because Tony doesn't even have to close his eyes to see this memory. The hem of Steve's trousers are wet, and the glass crunches under his boots as he strides over it, grabbing Tony by his dirty, sweat-stained shirt.

_"I'll break every damn bottle in this place, if it gets you to sober up."_

_"I can't. I can't." Bear to be sober, is what Tony means._

_"And I can't stand to see you this way, walking the short road to a grave. Christ. Do you know what it's like, worrying each time I come here that I'll open the door and find you dead of this poison?"_

_Tony wipes at his eyes. "Don't put this on me...don't—"_

_"It is on you, Tony. No one else can stop you. I want to help, but I can't stand by and watch you throw your life away. I'm not asking for the moon. All I want is for you to try. Can you at least try for me?"_

_Tony nods, lets Steve kiss him later, even though he feels a piece of himself screaming. You'll fail him, it warns._

_That night, after Steve leaves, Tony packs his whole liquor cabinet in a rough, wood box. He buries it behind the house in a shallow, unmarked, two-by-three foot grave._

_It's a new beginning, he tells himself._

In the present, Tony smiles, recognizing the bald-face lie. It didn't last then, and it certainly hasn't lasted this time around. He still has the dirt under his fingernails from exhuming the box.

It was nice to believe it while he could, though.

He's walking the short road again, and he doesn't care. It doesn't feel so short to him. Since he buried Steve, it feels more like the longest, loneliest road he's ever been on. If this is his last mile, then so be it. And if he doesn't have another soul to keep him company? Well then at least he has a bottle and a warm glow in his chest. 

He rummages around in the box, grasping for another bottle. Most days he drinks to forget. Tonight Tony is drinking to remember. This time he pulls out a rum bottle.  _Sweet liquor for a sweet memory,_ or so Tony hopes, drinking it down.

For a time, it is.

This time the vision that greets him is of Steve making love to him. 

He is splayed on the bed, with Steve between his legs, grinding against him. 

The memory makes Tony flush all over, and he can't tell if it's the drink or the desire that pushes away the last bit of cold.

_Steve's hand reaches down between them, wrapping his fingers around both Tony and himself. Tony throws his head back, reveling in the dual feel of Steve's silky cock and his rough hand, and at the way Steve pumps his hand in, long, languid strokes. He feels so close, but he wants this to last. His hands grab Steve by the hair, and he pulls the sheriff into a full-throated kiss._

_"I want your mouth," Tony whispers._

He aches, remembering the way Steve grinned at him, the way he gave Tony the most chaste peck on the lips before swallowing his cock.

He wishes he could reverse time and crawl back into that moment. He'd savor it more, now that he knows what's coming next.

_"Did I leave my badge over here last night?" Steve calls from the other room as the door slams behind Tony. Tony is hauling in a bucket of freshly pumped water to clean them both up. "I haven't been able to find it today."_

_"Not that I've seen."_

_Tony is puzzled when there is no reply. He sets the bucket down and goes to the bedroom door. There he finds Steve, his search interrupted. He's on his hands and knees, a flask in one hand, the cap to it in his other, heartbreak in his eyes._

_"You promised," he said._

_"I promised to try."_

It was the last time they made love. To Steve, Tony became Stark. And as the distance between them grew, Tony sunk deeper into the bottle. 

What else was there for him?

But then that awful day had come, and Tony had been too drunk to do anything as Steve bled out. Tony had sworn off drinking again after that. He thought he'd found a purpose in being Iron Man—in avenging Steve.

But somehow, it's never enough. In fits and starts, he tries, and he fails, and he comes to this place again.

The cold comes crashing back on Tony with a vengeance. He can't feel his fingers, and he's oddly lightheaded. Too long since anything has passed between his lips. He fumbles clumsily with the box. He needs another bottle.

"I thought you'd quit for good this time."

Tony feels his heart freeze, and he drops the bottle in his frozen hands. That voice—it can't be. 

Tony looks up, and there he is. Steve is standing on the porch, at the very edge of the lantern's yellow glow, more shadow than man. But Tony can see how his blue eyes shine in the dim light, tender and loving, an echo of better times, when they lay entwined around one another.

Steve is wearing only a long-sleeve shirt, no coat, but it doesn't look like the chilly night air bothers him any. He pulls off his hat, putting it in front of his chest, a very meek gesture, and walks over to take a seat next to Tony.

It even smells like Steve. Tony presses his hands to his face, overwhelmed, his head swimming. This is a cruel, drunken vision. He wants the memories back. At least he knows those were real, even if they are bittersweet.

Tony feels Steve's hand on his shoulder, and when he looks up, the hand cups his cheek, warm, with all-too familiar calluses, solid and true.

Tony's eyes brim with tears of shock. "How?" No—he doesn't care about that now. "Oh god, I've missed you."

He throws himself at Steve, and the other man pulls him close, curling his fingers around the nape of Tony's neck protectively. He feels giddy and light in Steve's arms.

Then Steve pulls Tony up with him to stand. He's so unexpectedly sad; his eyes look like they did that night as he knelt on the bedroom floor, the flask in his hand.

Steve's hat is sitting abandoned on the porch now, and in the flickering light of the wind-blown lantern, Tony sees a stain on Steve's shirt, a bright red blossom of blood across the left side of his chest, as fresh as the day he died.

He sees Tony staring, but he doesn't say a word.

A gentle tugging sensation in Tony's gut makes him turn around, and he sees himself sitting on the porch, curled up over the box. He's pale, and his head is slumped and resting on his chest.

Strange how quickly emotions can turn. Apathy turns to fear turns to regret, all in the space of a breath. Only Tony realizes that he isn't breathing anymore.

"No—" Tony says, and he feels sick at the thought of Red Wolf or Natasha finding him like this. "No, this can't be it." There's still so much to be done...

"Do you know, I said the same thing?" Steve says, a bittersweet smile on his face. He holds out his hand to Tony.

For a moment, Tony is torn. "There's no way back? No way to undo this?"

Steve shakes his head.

A miserable knot of guilt and shame works its way through Tony's stomach, a moment of clarity. One more failure. One more screw up. "Some job I did, carrying your torch."

"Sometimes all you can do is try. I understand that better now," Steve says. There is no judgment in his words. "I failed too, after all…" His hand brushes against the bloody stain on his chest.

Tony opens his mouth to protest, but the world suddenly feels like it's growing darker around him, like it's spitting him out. He takes Steve's hand, a man clinging to a rope on the deck of a storm-borne ship.

"Are you ready to go?" Steve asks.

"Go where?" Tony asks. He had always thought that death was the end of the road, not the beginning of something else.

"You'll see."

A gust of wind finally knocks out the lantern light, and Tony senses that this is a sign. Whether he is ready or not, it's time. "Will I?" There's trepidation in his voice. "I can't see anything right now." They don't even have the light of the stars to guide them.

"It's only dark at the beginning," Steve promises, wrapping his arm around Tony's shoulders and leading him out into the snow.

 


End file.
